X-ray Observational Signature of a Black Hole Accretion Disk in an Active Galactic Nucleus RX J1633+4718

Abstract

We report the discovery of a luminous ultra-soft X-ray excess in a radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy, RX J1633+4718, from archival ROSAT observations. The thermal temperature of this emission, when fitted with a blackbody, is as low as 32.5^+8.0 _-6.0 eV. This is in remarkable contrast to the canonical temperatures of ~0.1-0.2 keV found hitherto for the soft X-ray excess in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and is interestingly close to the maximum temperature predicted for a postulated accretion disk in this object. If this emission is indeed blackbody in nature, the derived luminosity (3.5^+3.3 _-1.5 × 10⁴⁴ erg s^-1) infers a compact emitting area with a size (~5 × 10¹² cm or 0.33 AU in radius) that is comparable to several times the Schwarzschild radius of a black hole (BH) at the mass estimated for this AGN (~3 × 10⁶ M _sun). In fact, this ultra-steep X-ray emission can be well fitted as the (Compton scattered) Wien tail of the multi-temperature blackbody emission from an optically thick accretion disk, whose inferred parameters (BH mass and accretion rate) are in good agreement with independent estimates using the optical emission-line spectrum. We thus consider this feature as a signature of the long-sought X-ray radiation directly from a disk around a supermassive BH, presenting observational evidence for a BH accretion disk in the AGN. Future observations with better data quality, together with improved independent measurements of the BH mass, may constrain the spin of the BH.